creating value

While in Wisconsin this week for work, a few members of my Team are attending a seminar called "creating value". The reason for this course is to learn how to better align our companies strategies and initiatives with our customers strategies and initiatives through a process called value creation. These meetings are always very beneficial and you take away key learning's that can truly be applied to your work, however in this particular session I am also learning things to be applied to my every day life.



The leader for this session is a 51 year old man with a vast amount of experience in life and business. He ties in his personal life and experiences while sticking to a curriculum. He oddly enough told us he had just lost his Mom two weeks ago and his Father many years ago. He said, "I am parent-less". Wow, we have something in common I thought yet, I am much younger. He told us about his beautiful 2 daughters that were in there 20's and I was thinking how lucky he is to have had his Mom watch his daughters grow into beautiful adults. I will never have that.



He then left us with some very strong words. He said he had the best Father in the world who had many friends throughout life. His youngest daughter asked her grandfather one day why he had so many friends and he replied, "because I am interested not interesting".

Think about that for a minute. He was interested in others -not trying so hard to be interesting...... I really liked that. Unfortunately, 93% of Americans (direct statistic from him) are not interested. They spend way too much time and energy on trying to be interesting to others.



I sat and pondered those words and thought about my own Dad. He was very much interested in others and never cared to much about talking about himself. And he was a great friend. Same with my Mommy. And that is why they had well over 500 people at their visiting hours and a few hundreds at the actual funeral.





He also brought up something so random but the group ended up having a blast with it. He talked about his daughters and how he wanted them to date the right type of men.... so with his daughters, they created a "guy compass". I like these and will pass them on to Ted to teach to our daughter!

-observe how he spends his money ( does he purchase things or experiences?)

-observe his friends (you can choose your friends, not your family)

-observe his relationship with his parents (close family or not)

-observe how he treats the wait staff (this one was my favorite as it shows how he treats normal everyday people)



See, work can be really fun. I went to a training seminar but also took away a few life lessons........be more interested and tips to making sure my daughter marries the right guy! He also talked a lot of true happiness and taking things off of our plate that are meaningless. We only have 100 hours to spend each week so spend them right. "time is our ultimate currency" he explained.